flashquake Poetry
Honorable Mention

In the Arch of Titus by Jeffrey Alfier

From his vaulted apex he looks below
on bas reliefs of plunder that will not
relinquish a vision of desert suns
that would slide beneath a yellow-brown sky
of dust storms, as if to meld with the hide
of jackals beyond roads the X Legion
built in a land that can still hate a ghost
back into its tomb. Fleeing toward heaven,
this man-made eagle can rise no higher
than a siege tower, his stone wings watching
as supplicants of twenty centuries
of a lone god drag their immaculate
agony across his Sacra Via.

They think Roman honor was more than brute
purchase by gilded skulls. But if man named
no streets sacred, there may never be wars.

Copyright 2002 by Jeffrey Alfier

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